Funky Phonics, Early Reading and Writing
Funky Phonics
Every day between 10.40 and 11.00am every child in school from Nursery through to Year 2 take part in a Funky Phonics
session that is targeted at the right level for their development. Every six weeks the children are assessed on their level of
understanding and are either moved on to the next phase or repeat their current phase. It is not uncommon for a child to
need to do a phase twice or sometimes three times. It is important that we do not move them on before they are ready
because these are lifelong skills that need to be embedded.
Phase 1
The very earliest skills a child needs to develop are being able to differentiate different sounds around them, to pick them
out of the general noise all around. Can you hear the car, aeroplane, bird singing, Daddy in the next room? Then they need
to be able to tell the difference between similar sounds, is that the phone or the door bell? The washing machine or the
dishwasher? Children also need to be able to copy different voice sounds for example animal noises, wheee, boing, zoom.
Children need to be aware of rhyme and rhythm, so we will introduce them to a new song every week and play games to
help them keep the beat. During this phase we will also be encouraging the children to start listening to the sounds in
words and encouraging them to break simple words into the different sounds or build simple words from the sounds, c-a-t
is cat and cat is c-a-t.
When children can hear and say the sounds in simple words and are able to take part fully in the session they are ready to
move on to the next phase.
Phase 2
In this phase the children will begin to learn the letter names and the sounds they make, we say ‘the letter f makes the
sound f’. They will also be taught how to write the lowercase letter with the correct formation. They will also be
introduced to the first six ‘tricky’ words that need to be memorised because you cannot sound them out. In order to
progress to the next phase children will need to be able to read simple words using the new letters they have learnt, for
example, cut, pin, mess, doll and either write or use magnetic letters to build similar simple words.
Letters / sounds: s, a, t, i, p, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss, ck
Tricky words: I, the, me, he, she, we
Early Reading
When children are able to recognise all the sounds they have been taught in Funky Phonics phase 2 and use them to
decode simple words they will be given their first reading book. Home reading books practise sounds already learnt and
children start by sounded everything out loud before doing it in their heads. Guided Reading in school practises all the
other skills that good readers need.
Early Writing
Writing is made up of distinct skills that are gained at different rates by different children, usually by the end of Year 2 all
the strands have come together:
Composition or knowing what to write
Some children find it very hard to write sentences even if they can write single words to quite a high level.
We work on this through shared writing in Early Years and Guided Writing sessions in KS1.
The ability to accurately spell words
Children use their phonics to write simple words and learn ‘tricky’ words which cannot be sounded
out. This is taught initially through Funky Phonics and Shared Writing in Early Years and then Guided
Writing in KS1.
The ability to hold a pencil to accurately form recognisable letters
This is handwriting and needs to be taught and practised. We start with children’s names and then
teach the letter families, curly caterpillars, one armed robots, zig zag monsters and long ladders.